Blood Ties

Sword and Sorcery in the World of Darkness

Blood Ties

In a world not unlike our own, dragons, unicorns, shades, and other magical beasts stalked the land. Supreme rulers of their environments. Humans and magical beasts alike fought great wars for any number fo reasons. Demons, Angels, Dragons battled for the heavens, while Unicorns, Nymphs, and Pixies fought for the forests. It was a dark time.

The most powerful creatures on the planet gathered to settle it once and for all. Even the Demons joined the great contract. They were unified to end treachery. Some might think this would be odd for demons to agree to end treachery, but the truth according to them is that Angels were the treacherous ones.

In a conclave the likes of which the world had never seen before or will again, the leaders of man, giant, dragon, angel, demon, and many others gathered to forge a powerful agreement that would bind all those who signed contracts to follow not only the letter of the contract, but the meaning behind it when it was written.

This set a disastrous course for the enitre world. The magic involved had been thoroughly researched by all involved before it was harnessed, but there are some things that no one could foresee. Contracts were used by almost anyone for almost any reason. The magic binding these contracts was pulling most the magic from the world. Dragon eggs weren’t hatching, Unicorns were being still birthed, Shades were stepping into the shadows to never return.

So the creatures once again met, much fewer in number this time. They met with the most powerful magic users in the world to find a cure for the plague. None could be found. So they decided on a course of action that would see the death of the world as they knew it. They would give their life essences to humans and what was left of the magic of these once mighty creatures would live on in the blood of man. They forged a contract with the king of man. That he would try to find a cure to the problem and bring back the creatures. And that he would require that his descendants did the same.

It has now been over two thousand years since the last of the beasts died off. Some people think of them as mythological, but most think of them as gone forever.

Blood Ties

Blood Ties
Comments

Behind the scenes stuff. As things start to get moe convoluted and you have more powerful enemies/allies, behind the scenes stuff becomes far more important. I’m going to sell out a few of my wifes secrets so you guys get an idea of how powerful things behind the scenes can be.

She has taken telepathy, the pyschic friends network version, where she can link multiple minds. Being the ever loving manipulator and having three skills with connected now, she has access to up to 9 points of changeable merits. So she can literally walk into a town see the guards, make them allies using connected, and then start issuing them commands mentally. To make things worse/better depending on whose side you’re on. She also has butterfly wings which means her political favors acrue interest. So she can quell a small uprising using her “guards” then gain political favor which can be cashed in at a far higher rate somewhere down the road.

Everyone of course isn’t the manipulator, but you might want to find ways to build influence, power, allies, etc. behind the scenes. Things like Nick haveing access to the libraries and the very intelligent people that work for them is another great example.

Remember at a certain point things are going to start getting very hairy and having lots of friends can’t hurt.

Alright – here’s a biggie. Everyone who ever checks this – go into the Adventure Log. Based off my quick note during gaming sessions I got it as up to date as I could. If anyone has smething to add there is a section for comments for each entry. Just make a comment where I talk about things that happened at a similar time.

Also as things get more complicated and people gain more allies and enemies, things that happen behind the scenes are going to play a bigger role. So please feel free to message me with things that you are doing behind the scenes.

As I slowly but surely put together the exact map of the entire continent, I’m going to be revising the travel times that I have given you guys in the past. For example the travel times from this last week would have been significantly longer – since the southernmost portion of the country is about 1200 miles wide – covering half the continent at a leisurly(sp) pace would have taken about a full month by itself, all told even with your delays I had only had it take you guys thirty five days – and since you were crossing more then half it would have been closer plus the delays, it would have been closer to forty or forty five days. All said and done this means that your travel times last week were about 20 days longer then I had accounted for meaning that everyone has an extra 6 exp for the travel time.

I updated the spell merits – they cost 2+ the level of the spell. I did this because the cost of skills/attributes/etc. are so much more expensive then a power when it is 1+ the level of the spell. For example a person can buy up a 2 celerity (1 point for the first, two points for the 2nd, so the power is the same as a level three power.) under the old rules for 20 exp which translates into moving much faster and a +2 to their defense. This way the power costs 30 exp. This having been said, since masteries are so much cheaper, people are probably going to want to max out your masteries before switching over to spells.

This having been said, the level of the power you can have is the level of your arete. So with an arete 3 you can have a third level power as a spell which would be a five point merit. Once you have an arete 6 you can have a level 6 power as a spell, but it would be an eight point merit.

yeah, I’ve been trying to figure that one out, that would give them an advantage that others don’t have, but there are other ways to balance this, so I might do that, but give everyone else another innate advantage.

Magic Spells – So I found another alternate rule for magic, let me know if you guys are cool with this. Basically instead of spells being a skill mastery, you buy them up as merits. The merit cost is one plus the level of the ability. So to buy up a level four power it would be a five point merit. Which would cost 30 exp. But you wouldn’t have any limitation. Or we could do both where you can take it as a skill mastery, but if you have other skill masteries you want, or have already maxed out on the amount of spells for you masteries, then you can but up additional spells as merits.

Combat Styles Part Two – I added a tab in the Wiki under the House Rulese section for fighting styles. If you would like to customize your fighting styles feel free to ask for me to show you that section in the Mirrors book.

Combat Styles – I forgot to mention this at character creation, mainly because it’s an obscure part of one book, but there are rules for making your own combat manuevers. Aso I’ve already ordered the Armory: Reloaded book, which has different combat styles. So people that want to change their styles either by making their own (or describing what they want to me and having me design it.) or by switching to a different style, will be allowed to do so.

I haven’t got it up and running yet, but I’m going to be posting a whole group of pages inside the Wiki under the house rules section regarding character customization. I know Nicholas wanted a mechanical horse, and that for the most part this isn’t possible, since people just can’t make artifacts. But as in any truly epic fantasy series people do discover things that no one thought could be done. And using the different rules, you can accomplish almost anything.

One of the most important things is that something even if you have the experience to spend to buy up the right skills, attributes, and powers to make what you want, I won’t let you do it. To accomplish something that no one has ever done before takes one thing more than anything else, time.

So for example no one has made an artifact in thousands of years, but you think you’ll give it a try. Well first you need to figure out how to do the enchanting, then how to make it permanent, and so on and so forth, it’s not something that you can do overnight. This i for two reasons -

One – is that is how it works in real life invention is a painstaking process that involves many prototypes and lots of experimentation before the final project is ready.

Two – is that I don’t like it. I want players and characters a like to have a goal and work towards it. Waking up one morning and saying I want a cannon that I can carry in my hand, might be possible and they might have the experience, but I still say MO, just because it’s not how things should be done.